Electron-nucleus scattering and the polarization sum rules

Abstract

A formal derivation of the polarization correlations between the incident electron and the scattered electron is given for a general class of transition operators. In correspondence to the case of bremsstrahlung emission, three sum rules for the polarization correlations are predicted, which reduce to the known one for potential scattering. Further examples, including the 1_2^+ and 2_1^+ excitations of the 12C nucleus and a 1^- excitation of the 208Pb nucleus, are discussed and the validity of the corresponding sum rules is investigated.